See INDIA: A. D. 1877.
KAISER, Origin of the title.
See CÆSAR, THE TITLE.
KAISERSLAUTERN, Battle of.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1794 (MARCH-JULY).
KALAPOOIAN FAMILY, The.
See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: KALAPOOIAN FAMILY.
KALB, Baron De, and the War of the American Revolution.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1780 (FEBRUARY-AUGUST).
KALEVALA,
KALEWALA, The.
"To a certain class of modern philologists, no poem in the
world is more familiar than the Kalewala, the long epic, which
is to the mythology and traditional lore of the Finns what the
Iliad and Odyssey of Homer are to the heroic story of ancient
Greece. It is the source from which nearly all the information
connected with the religious creed, the moral notions, the
customs, and the domestic details of a most remarkable race is
to be obtained. If we would know how the Greeks of the heroic
age prayed, fought, eat, drank, sported, and clothed
themselves, we turn to the pages of Homer. If we would obtain
similar knowledge on the subject of the Finns, we consult the
Kalewala. Though the traditions of the Finnish heroes are
possibly as old as those of Achilles and Ajax, the arrangement
of them into a continuous poem is a work of very recent date.
No Wolfian controversy will arise respecting the construction
of the Kalewala, for it is not more than twenty-five years
since the Peisistratid who first put together the isolated
songs, or Runes, published the result of his labours.
Fragments of Finnish poetry, collected from the oral
traditions of the people, had already made their appearance,
though even the first important collection of these, which was
made by Dr. Zacharias Topelius, dates no further back than
1822. … But it is with Dr. Lönnrot that the existence of the
epic as an epic, with the title 'Kalewala,' begins. He
published it in thirty-two Runes,—that is to say, books or
cantos, for the word, which previously denoted an independent
poem, now sinks into little more than a sign of division,
though here and there, it must be confessed, an abrupt
transition occurs, to which a parallel would not be found in
the Iliad or the Odyssey. In 1849 a second edition of the
Kalewala was published, likewise under the superintendence of
Dr. Lönnrot, containing fifty cantos and nearly 23,000 lines."
_J. Oxenford,
Kalewala
(Temple Bar, December, 1860)._
{1936}
"Besides its fresh and simple beauty of style, its worth as a
storehouse of every kind of primitive folk-lore, being as it
is the production of an Urvolk, a nation that has undergone no
violent revolution in language or institutions—the Kalevala
has the peculiar interest of occupying a position between the
two kinds of primitive poetry, the ballad and the epic. …
Sixty years ago, it may be said, no one was aware that Finland
possessed a national poem at all. Her people—who claim
affinity with the Magyars of Hungary, but are possibly a
back-wave of an earlier tide of population—had remained
untouched by foreign influences since their conquest by
Sweden, and their somewhat lax and wholesale conversion to
Christianity: events which took place gradually between the
middle of the twelfth and the end of the thirteenth centuries.
… The annexation of Finland by Russia, in 1809, awakened
national feeling, and stimulated research into the songs and
customs which were the heirlooms of the people. … From the
north of Norway to the slopes of the Altai, ardent explorers
sought out the fragments of unwritten early poetry. These
runes, or runots, were sung chiefly by old men called Runoias,
to beguile the weariness of the long dark winters. The custom
was for two champions to engage in a contest of memory,
clasping each other's hands, and reciting in turn till he
whose memory first gave in slackened his hold. The Kalevala
contains an instance of this practice, where it is said that
no one was so hardy as to clasp hands with Wäinämöinen, who is
at once the Orpheus and the Prometheus of Finnish mythology.
These Runoias, or rhapsodists, complain, of course, of the
degeneracy of human memory; they notice how any foreign
influence, in religion or politics, is destructive to the
native songs of a race. 'As for the lays of old time, a
thousand have been scattered to the wind, a thousand buried in
the snow. … As for those which the Munks (the Teutonic
knights) swept away, and the prayer of the priest
over-whelmed, a thousand tongues were not able to recount
them.' In spite of the losses thus caused, and in spite of the
suspicious character of the Finns, which often made the task
of collection a dangerous one, enough materials remained to
furnish Dr. Lönnrot, the most noted explorer, with thirty-five
Runots, or cantos. These were published in 1835, but later
research produced the fifteen cantos which make up the
symmetrical fifty of the Kalevala. In the task of arranging
and uniting these, Dr. Lönnrot played the part generally
ascribed to Pisistratus in relation to the Iliad and Odyssey.
He is said to have handled with singular fidelity the
materials which now come before us as one poem, not without a
certain unity and continuous thread of narrative. It is this
unity which gives the Kalevala a claim to the title of epic,
although the element of permanence which is most obvious in
the Greek epics, and in the earliest Hebrew records, is here
conspicuously absent. … Among the Finns we find no trace of
an aristocracy; there is scarcely a mention of kings, or
priests; the heroes of the poem are really popular heroes,
fishers, smiths, husbandmen, 'medicine-men' or wizards;
exaggerated shadows of the people, pursuing on a heroic scale,
not war, but the common daily business of primitive and
peaceful men. In recording their adventures, the Kalevala,
like the shield of Achilles, reflects all the life of a race,
the feasts, the funerals, the rites of seed-time and harvest,
of marriage and death, the hymn, and the magical incantation.
Were this all, the epic would only have the value of an
exhaustive collection of the popular ballads which, as we have
seen, are a poetical record of all the intenser moments in the
existence of unsophisticated tribes. But it is distinguished
from such a collection, by presenting the ballads as they are
produced by the events of a continuous narrative, and thus it
takes a distinct place between the aristocratic epics of
Greece, or of the Franks, and the scattered songs which have
been collected in Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, and
Italy. Besides the interest of its unique position as a
popular epic, the Kalevala is very precious, both for its
literary beauties and for the confused mass of folk-lore which
it contains. … What is to be understood by the word
'Kalevala'? The affix 'la' signifies 'abode.' Thus, 'Tuonela'
is 'the abode of Tuoni,' the god of the lower world; and as
'kaleva' means 'heroic,' 'magnificent,' 'Kalevala' is 'The
Home of Heroes,' like the Indian 'Beerbhoom,' or 'Virbhûmi.'
The poem is the record of the adventures of the people of
Kalevala—of their strife with the men of Pohjola, the place
of the world's end."
_A. Lang,
Kalevala
(Fraser's May, June, 1872)._
A complete translation of the Kalevala into English verse, by
John Martin Crawford, was published in New York, in 1888.
_Project Gutenberg
Kalevala: the Epic Poem of Finland—
Complete by Lönnrot and Crawford
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5186_
KALISCH, Battle of (1706).
See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1701-1707.
KALISCH, OR CALISCH, Treaty of.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1812-1813.
KALMUKS, The.
See TARTARS.